In a world under cyberattack on all sides, Microsoft wants to fight back

Brad Smith believes that the time is right for the global giants of computing and software to take the initiative in policing the web and a new era of cyberweaponsBen Gurr

It has become, for some, the biggest scandal to hit Washington since Watergate, but what if Russia-backed tampering in the US presidential election was merely the tip of the iceberg? Imagine, Brad Smith says, if state-sponsored hackers turned their attention to another country’s electrical grid, water supply or health system.

“Espionage is one thing,” Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer says, but attacking another country’s critical infrastructure is something else entirely. “We are talking about a new category of weapons, cyberweapons. We are dealing with a new era, a new plain of battle. What we are calling for is restraint and some limits being imposed.”

In fact, Microsoft is calling for a great deal more than that. As nation states increasingly joust with each other…

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